Fogbow

€4.55m Marquis de Sade manuscript acquired for French nation
Original scroll of The 120 Days of Sodom, written while the writer was jailed in the Bastille, has been bought as an ‘emblem of artistic freedom’

Alison Flood
Tue 13 Jul 2021 16.20 BST

The manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s infamous erotic tale The 120 Days of Sodom has been acquired by the French government for €4.55m, following a campaign to keep it in the country.

Written in 1785 by the aristocrat while he was imprisoned in the Bastille for a series of sexual scandals, the notorious scroll manuscript tells of four libertines, searching for sexual gratification, who abduct and sexually torture teenage victims. Sade, who described it as “the most impure tale ever written since the world began”, hid the 12 metre-long scroll in the wall of his cell, leaving it behind when he was moved to an asylum in 1789, 10 days before the Bastille was stormed.

Although its author never saw it again, the scroll survived, but was not published until 1904, by the sexologist Iwan Bloch. It was acquired by Sade’s descendants, the Noailles family, in 1929, but was stolen in 1982 and sold to erotica collector Gérard Nordmann. A private foundation acquired the scroll in 2014, and in 2017, France’s ministry of culture designated it a national treasure, putting a block on its export.

In February, the French government appealed for corporate help to acquire the manuscript. The purchase price was provided in its entirety by Emmanuel Boussard, co-founder of the Boussard & Gavaudan investment fund, said the ministry of culture, which described the manuscript as a “veritable monument” that has “profoundly marked many authors”, from André Breton to Georges Bataille.



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... s-of-sodom

Josephine Baker Becomes First Black Woman Inducted Into France’s Tomb of Heroes
President Emmanuel Macron hailed the American-born dancer and French resistance fighter as a symbol of unity in a time of sharp division.

By Roger Cohen

Nov. 30, 2021
PARIS — Josephine Baker, born in Missouri and beloved of France, whose life spanned French music-hall stardom and American civil rights activism, on Tuesday became the first Black woman to be inducted into the Panthéon, the nation’s hallowed tomb of heroes.

On a gray afternoon, 46 years after her death in Paris, soldiers from the Republican Guard bore a flag-draped coffin up the red-carpeted stairs of the Panthéon, where Ms. Baker joined 75 men and five women, including the author Émile Zola, the scientist Marie Curie, and the resistance hero Jean Moulin.

The coffin carried soil from the United States, France and Monaco — places that shaped Ms. Baker’s life. Her body, at the request of the family, will stay in Monaco.

The colonnaded facade of the Panthéon, with its engraved dedication to the “great men” of France, was lit with a remarkable collage of images ranging from Ms. Baker’s wild nights performing at the Folies Bergères in 1926 to her appearance in front of the Lincoln Memorial beside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Aug. 28, 1963, as he spoke the words, “I have a dream.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/worl ... theon.html

Incumbent Emmanuel Macron came first ahead of far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday and the two will face each other in a run-off on April 24, an early projection showed.

The projection by pollster Ipsos, released just after polling stations closed at 8 p.m., gave Macron 28.1 percent of the vote and Le Pen 23.3 percent.

Final results are expected later in the evening.

Dr. Ken wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 8:17 am It's the same old song

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:00 am

Dr. Ken wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 8:17 am It's the same old song

The replies were fun while they lasted.

Pelham @Resist_05 wrote: Pau, France… farmers dump truck loads of manure in protest of rising prices and the re-election of Macron.

Bataclan terrorist attack
Main suspect handed life sentence for 2015 Islamist attacks on Paris

By Tangi Salaün, Clotaire Achi and Ingrid Melander
June 30, 2022 12:50 AM GMT+2 Last Updated 3 hours ago

Summary

• All 20 defendants found guilty by French court
  Coordinated Nov. 13, 2015, attacks killed 130 people
  Bataclan hall survivor says trial surpassed expectations

PARIS, June 29 (Reuters) - A French court on Wednesday handed a life sentence to the lone survivor of the Islamist squad that killed 130 people in a night of carnage across Paris, bringing some closure to survivors and a country whose psyche was left scarred.

Salah Abdeslam was found guilty on terrorism and murder charges, with no possibility of early release, the most severe criminal sentence possible in France and one handed out only four times previously.

Nineteen other men judged for helping organise the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks that targeted the Bataclan music hall, six bars and restaurants and the Stade de France sports stadium were also all found guilty.

"Justice has been served," Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said.

"Against inhumanity, it's our democracy's strength to respond with justice to the attacks that plunged our city and our country in mourning. Paris remembers and will always stand by the victims and their families."




https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ve ... 022-06-29/

Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand

These have undoubtedly been the wildest 72 hours in French politics in my lifetime. Pretty incredible stuff.

A

So after losing big time in the EU elections to Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN), Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly, calling the French to elect new MPs on the 30th of June

This started what can only be called a movement of total panic throughout the French political class, because parties only have until this weekend to present candidates, and therefore decide on a strategy, who to ally with, etc.

The left got their shit together fairly fast, almost immediately announcing the creation of a "Popular Front" that gathers all the left-wing parties

Hilariously, Raphael Glucksmann, the head candidate of the Socialist Party for the EU elections, tried to prevent the alliance by going on TV to list some ridiculous pre-conditions for it, but literally no-one listened to him and they went forward with it.